Gardner was quick to admit he was no mathematician. “The big secret of my success as a columnist was that I didn’t know much about math,” he wrote. “I had to struggle to get everything clear before I wrote a column, so that meant I could write it in a way that people could understand.”

There.

But he wound up his column in 1981. He continued to write essays and books. Since 1994, his admirers have met bi-annually at Atlanta to swap puzzles and math ideas. The event is called G4G: the Gathering for Gardner. Said Roanld Graham of UC, San Diego, “Martin has turned thousands of children into mathematicians, and thousands of mathematicians into children.”

Now teachers include his puzzles in their math curriculum. Gardner is deeply satisfied at this change.

Ability to solve problems is part of evolution, says Gardner. He gives the example of how a chimp is better than a cow in solving problems. “Evolution has developed the brain’s ability to solve puzzles, and at the same time has produced in our brain a pleasure of solving problems.”

We all need to read his latest book, When You Were a Tadpole and I Was a Fish. Here he explains why there is special joy in the sudden insight – “the aha! moment” – when you attempt to solve a mathematical puzzle.

He argues that even if everything around us were to disappear, math theorems and facts would continue to exist. “Huge prime numbers would continue to be prime even if no one had proved them prime.”

What he means is this: when you figure out the answer to a math problem or a puzzle, you should have this great sense of achievement – what you have discovered is the truth that no one can contest.